This story is written as a birthday present for Padded Lexie, The Crinkly Writer, and uses one of her characters. You can find her at

https://twitter.com/TheDiaperWitch

The very concept of a town center is dead. Small town squares used to be found all over the country, but changes in people’s shopping habits resulted in them largely shutting down. The storefronts are filled with a few places that won’t shut down. Small antique stores and pawn shops somehow stay in business, most likely supported by retirees in need of something to pass the time.

But this shop was different.

For one thing, the reason people didn't go into other shops was because they didn't care. The reason they didn't go into this shop was because they couldn't care. Looking from the outside, you wouldn’t even be certain that people could see it. Certainly no one approached it. It wouldn’t even be accurate to say that they walked by it. They certainly walked past it. Those that crossed in front of it would pop from one side of the block to the other without so much as a comment. Occasionally, those gifted few would shudder and look around, but to no avail. It wasn’t a shop meant for normal people.

Alexandra, the witch, on the other hand, could see it, because she wasn’t a normal person. A sign, brighter than neon, proudly proclaimed “Atelier Shagbark”, and the window was painted with white lettering “Magical Goods, Used, New, and Custom” and smaller white lettering saying “Broom Repair & Refurbishment, Reasonable Rates” She hefted her broom over her shoulder, more straw falling loose from both the broom and her hair as she did so, and walked in.

The inside looked like a cross between an antique store and a machine shop. A shelf was full of vases with letters that danced and moved on their surface. A display of hands, hands that looked far too lifelike to be models that a human would pick out, held rings of all sorts. Hand written paper tags, in a neat CopperPlate script, hung from each item or rested at its base. What appeared to be a lava lamp housed a thing of waxy tentacles and sharp teeth. A fish tank was full of what appeared to be eyes with fins.

And towards the back there was a workbench. A workbench made of a solid slab of oak filled with pockmarks and covered in acid stains. A patternmakers vice covered one end of the large slab, and a leg vice took up the opposite corner. Alexandra guessed this was normal for a workbench, but the height seemed off. It came up to about her knee. As did the little creature in front of it who was running a rasp down a bit of beech. The thing looked up at her, but it was hard to see it in the patch of darkness. It strolled over to her, and pulled itself up onto a highchair next to the counter.

“Welcome to Shagbark’s,” it said, “I’m Shagbark.”

She continued staring at the creature. He-

“They,” Shagbark interrupted, "Definitely they, don’t get your human notions about gender mixed up with me.”

“Can you read my-” She began

“Thoughts? No,” said Shagbark, “I just have the knowing of the reading of faces.”

She took a moment to resume her stare. Shagbark was odd, to say the least. The first thing you noticed about them was the beard. It was white, wiry, and massive. Surely, there was more to them, but it was just all hidden behind the beard. From the top to the bottom she saw Shagbark was all face, beard, hands, and shoes. Their eyes were covered in dark goggles, and their head was covered with a leather cap. Two pointy ears jutted out much further than she had seen on any creature before.

“Ok, get it all out of your system,” Shagbark said, and pulled a pocket watch from the inner recesses of beard, “First time seeing a gnome?”

She nodded, and they shoved the pocket watch back into their beard. They leaned back, and Alexandra realized the other odd thing. The chair he was sitting in was an old wooden baby’s highchair, modified with a footrest at the front and a ladder on one side.

She stifled a laugh. Shagbark raised a massive eyebrow.

“Yes. Yes,” She said, “It is my first time seeing a gnome. Do you know that what you’re sitting in is meant for babies?”

They shrugged. “Pretty sure it’s meant for me,” they said, “Now, I take it you’re here about a broom?”

She handed it over, and they hopped down with it, and walked over to the short workbench. They flicked their fingers and formed a ball of light above the bench, placing the broom down. They twisted a lens on their goggles, and viewed the broom in the light. Every so often they tutted lowly, and looked back up at Alexandra disapprovingly.

“Had this broom long, had you?” They asked.

“I only just got it.” She said, truthfully, “It’s secondhand, belonged to another witch, I tried to-”

They raised up a finger to shush her, and her cheeks reddened. She felt her face and her lungs grow hot. She was a witch! She wasn’t supposed to put up with this from-

“You thought you’d paint it black for the look of the thing, didn’t you?” They pulled off a glove and rubbed a hard worn nail against the black surface, scraping off the black paint. Alexandra tried to answer, but they raised a finger again. “I bet you have welts on your hands from trying to hold onto this thing too. Don’t bother answering, there’s a good salve on the counter there, help yourself. Stick to linseed oil and wax in the future if you don’t want to wear riding gloves.”

Alexandra worked the salve into her sore hands obediently. She didn’t particularly want to, but it would have been so childish of her to stomp her feet at that. She already had a reputation, and she was doing her best not to add to it.

The gnome eyed down the bristles of the broom. “And you didn’t inspect the retaining coils for rust or wear. Shame that. And… let’s see.” They adjusted the lens of their goggle again. “You lost bristles at a high altitude because of that. I see the frost caused cracking here too. You plummeted back down to the ground at high speed, couldn’t control it, pulled back up at the last minute, and smacked straight into a hay bale.”

“Ok, how’d you figure that last one out?” She asked.

“You’ve got hay in your hair and clothes.” They said, and then sniffed the bristles, “And at some point during all that, you wet yourself. I’m guessing right about the point you reached terminal velocity judging by the spattering of the dried stains in the bristles. Then you walked all the way into town.”

She turned bright red, tightened her shoulders and fists, and then spoke through clenched teeth, “Would you please just be so kind as to tell me how much repairing it will cost?”

They looked her up and down. “Payment?” They asked. “Most witches try to bully me into doing it for free, at least the first time.”

“Would that work?”

Shagbark smiled. They walked back over to the counter and pulled out an abacus and a scrap of paper. After some careful figuring, they presented her with a circled figure. She stared at the amount. She looked back up at the gnome. She looked back down at the amount. She didn’t have that much money on her. She barely had any money on her. She shamefully emptied her coin purse out on the workbench.

Shagbark looked at the coins. “Is there anyone who can give you a lift home?” They asked.

She shook her head, and found herself gulping in an attempt to pull back the angry tears.

“Ok, Ok, Ok,” Shagbark said, “There’s no need for that. I’ll tell you what. The store could use a good dusting, and that’ll knock down the price enough to cover it. Alright?”

It wasn’t actually enough, and they both knew it. No amount of dusting would take care of a repair bill like this. But her traveling spells hadn’t exactly been on her side since the interdimensional tournament she competed in. A careless portal had nearly left her trapped as a ‘guest’ of a faerie queen, and she wasn’t risking that again. She needed to get home the proper way.

“Thank you,” She said, and tried to place her anger aside. The little dwarf-

“Gnome,” Shagbark interrupted matter of factly, “Though there is some level of overlap in folklore, and distinctions in the term are a modern invention.”

The gnome was going above and beyond for her here, so she nodded and allowed them to lead her to the cleaning supplies. She dusted carefully, and Shagbark gave her occasional bits of advice to keep her from burning herself, pricking her hand, losing fingers to the tentacle monster in the lava lamp, or getting trapped in a board game. Occasionally she peaked at their workbench to see the work in progress.

Shagbark cut the retaining coils free, carefully bundled the now loose bristles of the broom, and set them aside. They scraped the paint free with an odd metallic device.

“Wouldn’t it be faster to use magic?” Alexandra asked.

“Magic on magic is a great recipe for disaster,” Shagbark said as he cut and shaped new bristles with a broom maker’s hammer. “If you can do it by hand, do it by hand. Magic always demands payment.”

She turned to go back to cleaning, and realized she had run out of dust in the main room. She went to push back the beaded curtain leading into the other room.

“Don’t go in there,” Shagbark warned.

“Why?” Alexandra asked. “What’s in there?”

“That’s the adult’s only room. It’s got stuff in there not meant for a kid like you.”

The witch bristled at the comment. She had been trying to get a handle on her anger, she really had, but this was too much.

“I’m an adult!” She screamed. “I’m nearly Twenty One, I’ll have you know!” She stamped her foot.

They set the broom hammer down and looked up at her. She found herself shrinking in embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” She said, “It’s just been a really long day.”

“Go in there then if you want.” Shagbark picked the broom hammer back up and resumed their work. “I suppose you’ve earned yourself some more dusting if that’s what you want.”

She sheepishly pushed back the curtain and stepped through, just wanting to be out of sight more than anything at this point. Yelling and foot stamping? That was hardly mature of her, and she knew it. She wanted to make some excuses for her behavior, but the trouble was all of them made her sound more childish. The excuse, I had a rough day, I’ve been away from home longer than I wanted, I’m in a place I don’t know, I fell down and peed myself, and a strange little man-

“Gnome!” Shagbark called.

-GNOME- read me like an open book and made me feel small while they-

“Thank you.”

-sat in a highchair, still acting more mature than me was hardly an excuse worth saying. If anything, not saying it was the more adult option here. Still she steeled herself, and resolved to clean to the best of her ability.

However, when she found herself looking at what there was to clean, she didn’t feel anywhere near as confident. The room was littered with disturbing devices. A severed troll’s head held a silver mirror. A ring of hands rolled in on themselves in a metal frame. A sarcophagus stood in the corner, open to reveal a buttoned tufted cotton interior, with dark hands swirling in the patches of shadow. A ball gag with tentacles rolled on a shelf. A carpet bag sat in the back on another workbench, and hidden just out of her view by a cold cup of tea was a ticket reading ‘repair ticket, latch sticks/missing key’.

Alexandra walked back out.

“It’s ok if you’re scared of things like that,” Shagbark said, “You’ll gain more courage as you get older.”

Alexandra stormed back in.

She cleaned harder than she ever had before. Not once did she ever stop to wonder if the gnome might have just tricked her into working. She just gave it her absolute all. She was so busy cleaning that she didn’t see the ring of hands fall. They grabbed onto her ankle and she screamed, jumping up and tripping, falling against the wall.

Were it mechanical, the entire resulting process might have been compared to a Rube Goldberg machine. She slipped and slid around the hands, and knocked down the shelf holding the tentacled ball gag. The gag soared up and fell on her, where its tentacles wrapped around her face and gagged her. She pulled desperately at it, backing up in a vain attempt to get away from it. She fell backwards into the sarcophagus.

She felt the hands swarm over her as the lid closed tight. She screamed against the gag. The hands were lifting her skirt and folding multiple layers of cloth against her skin. Something was tied around her hands and feet. Moments later she was booted from the sarcophagus, and saw herself fully in the silver mirror.

Her skirt was raised by the bulk of it, and there was no hiding what she was wearing. A cloth diaper, held fast with snaps and tied with ruffles and lace. Mittens and booties covered her hands and feet. The gag, perhaps wanting to get in on the joke, shifted into a pacifier.

Shagbark walked in at that moment, proudly holding up a broom that looked better than new.

“Would you take a look at this,” They said, holding it aloft, “I wasn’t sure how it’d turn out, but it can’t be like anything you’ve ever seen before.”

Alexandra, looking in the mirror, knew that she had seen things turn out like this before. She was never going to shake the nickname The Diapered Witch. The universe itself seemed out to humiliate her. She sobbed behind the pacifier, and stepped backwards. She once again fell over the ring of grasping hands, but this time fell into the carpet bag, and the latch closed behind her.

She fell much further than should have been possible. The difference between a foot and a half and ten feet is a fair amount no matter who you are, but the distance feels much larger when you’re falling through it. She bounced on a mattress when she hit the bottom. After she caught her breath, she raised her mittened hands against the bars around her.

She was in a nursery. The bars of the crib were too high for her to swing herself over, and her mittened hands prevented her from climbing. Her stomach gurgled, and she found herself desperately hoping that the dwarf-

“Gnome”

-gnome could get her out soon.

Outside the carpet bag nursery, Shagbark caught the overturned repair ticket in his free hand. He brought it down to his face, and raised his massive eyebrows. He scratched his beard with the repair ticket.

“I think the parts for that should be here Thursday.”